this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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X is one of his older websites, a financial platform that he created after his first startup was sold. Name comes from "X marks the spot" from old treasure maps, was to be the place for all transactions.
It struggled and didn't really get off the ground, but was able to merge with another platform called Confinity, run by Peter Thiel. The merged platforms then became PayPal, and made both guys rich as shit. Thiel eventually power played Musk and got him kicked out of the company, arguably for good reason, though Thiel is quite a piece of work, too.
The new X is Musk's attempt to make twitter more like his old site, and is why he was throwing around things like making it a peer to peer payment site, similar to WeChat / WePay or Venmo. How he plans to make tweets into bank transfers I've got no idea, esp. when losing 30 percent of users.
More on this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2024/01/09/x-announces-peer-to-peer-payment-service-will-launch-in-2024/?sh=62ee775a75a8
Pretty much he wants to turn X/Twitter as WeChat's clone for the West.
As WeChat is both a messaging and payment app used by a couple of hundreds of millions of users in China where people can send money, split bills, pay, etc. using the app.
Visa and MasterCard are extremely profitable companies enjoying really high margins and having very little competition. And this is very lucrative business: